


Hurt For Me

by brokenmemento



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 01, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 18:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Set directly in the aftermath of the events of 1x10.





	Hurt For Me

**Author's Note:**

> A short little one-shot. Rating is mostly based on language.

She’d say a part of her died that day on the side of the road, tossed aside and left bleeding and in need of help. Just like her husband.

But she'd be lying. She’d be lying because a little bit of her was already gone when, in a rage, she’d flung open the door expecting to see him, but instead leaked anger and ruins while two cops stared at her without words. 

Maybe part of her had gone the way of her womanhood, or whatever the fuck apparently identified it to everyone else but herself. Maybe the part of her that was festering and black and really no good had been around for a while. 

It’s why she can’t find much except numbness in her body while her finger caresses the warmth of metal underneath. (Everyone always says cold. Like fear removes any life from the object. But no, it’s hot and breathless and the heat of it scorches) It’s why the same warm sticks itself to her fingers as she slides through her contacts to punch the one number that should have been erased the second she heard the truth hit the open air. 

But aren’t wounded things attracted to others of the same kind? Hasn’t she been punishing herself for over a year now, just because she can? So yeah, she calls Judy. She calls Judy and uses words like “home” and doesn’t stop herself because she’s allowed it to be true. She’s housed her husband’s murderer, befriended her, confided in her, lost the chunks of herself she didn’t even know she still held in the soft lull of Judy.

Fuck Steve. Fuck Steve, so hard. He’s wrong. Judy is good and gentle and all of the shit he  _ took _ from her because she’s made Jen human again instead of just a raging animal. 

The water laps gently at the pool’s edge. Her phone is still gripped in her hand, but she finds her body letting out an involuntary sigh, like it’s been dying to let go of the trapped air. 

“Oh,” Jen says to herself in surprise. She must be capable of a lot of shit now. Empathy, mania, compassion, murder. Eh, well…

Behind her, she hears the scraping of the hinges to the gate, knows it reasonably could be a number of people: the kids, her annoying fucking neighbor, Karen, who heard the sound and wanted to snoop or offer more poor Mexican fusion dishes, the damn cops. But somewhere inside her, she knows who it is before she even thinks about turning around. So she doesn’t.

In her peripheral, she sees the wavy brown strands of hair, the now almost black doe-y eyes, the pale pink plumpness of lips that are now parted in a shocked but suspended stage. 

“It’s...it’s Steve,” Judy says, rather dumbly. 

Jen has to scold herself at the thought because that’s what Steve would think too, isn’t it? He’d tell her she was stupid at stating the obvious. And while she’s pissed and a lot of other emotions, that’s the one line she won’t cross with Judy. 

“Yeah, well I owed you one,” Jen says into the night. 

A spouse for a spouse. Or significant other.

She tries to tell her heart to not feel guilt from the words, to not crumble apart from taking Judy out at the knees. Beside her, a gasp is smothered almost as soon as it comes out. Judy spins, grabbing her by the robe, and propels her into the studio with its destruction. Jen tries not to feel again when Judy’s mouth does that wide O thing  _ again _ at seeing some of her things in shambles. 

Fabrics are strewn on the ground and knickknacks lying all around. The gold table in the middle of the room sits knocked over and resting on its side. Whatever she thinks about seeing some of her things wrecked like this night, she doesn't say. 

In what Jen assumes is a nervous flurry of energy, she watches Judy begin to pace, eyes wide and breath coming raggedly.

“What are we going to do. Shit, what are we going to do?” Judy repeats over and over. The words press further together the longer she paces and talks. 

Jen, quite frankly, has had enough of it. Enough of everything and all the fucked up crap that stirred the second this chaos walking entered her life. She reaches out, grabs Judy hard, jerks her into her body. Then she’s all around her. Softness and sincerity and concern and damn, no one has looked at Jen this way in a while, have they?

“Please, just be quiet,” she manages to whisper. That eerie calm she’s been feeling is ebbing and something else flaring hard. 

“Jen, I don’t know what to do,” Judy says, helpless and like a child. Mostly because she’s had Steve to bail her out, boss her around, and belittle her to the point of submission. Not anymore. 

Jen guesses that’s why she presses a quick kiss into Judy, one that she’d intended to land on her cheek but then Judy shifts a little and she can slightly feel the graze of lips across her own. If today had been any other damn day, she might be surprised by the feel of them, of the effect they have on her. But not today. 

She rests her forehead on Judy’s, hot breath mixing with the woman in front of her. She says the only thing she’s got in her but believes it just the same. 

“We’ll figure it out,” she answers and rakes an assuring hand down the expanse of the other woman’s arm.

Because if Judy is chaos walking? Together, they’re a fucking hurricane.


End file.
